Dec. 4 (Bloomberg) -- French President Nicolas Sarkozy
called on India to play a greater role in the Group of 20
nations and pledged to support its bid for a permanent seat at
the United Nations Security Council.

“We need you to regulate the global monetary order,” the
French leader said in Bangalore at the start of a four-day visit
to India. “The Indian currency one day will be part of the
great currencies of the world,” Sarkozy said in a speech at the
Indian Space Research Organisation.

Sarkozy, the current chairman of the G-20, will seek
support from Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for his plans
to overhaul the global monetary system and regulate commodities
markets. To boost French economic and employment recovery amid
Europe’s debt crisis, Sarkozy will push for sales of submarines
as well as combat jets, and seek transport and energy deals.

A permanent seat on the U.N. Security Council would help
India take “its full role in the G-20,” Sarkozy said. U.S.
President Barack Obama said Nov. 8 during a visit to India that
he would back the South Asian nation’s bid to become a permanent
Security Council member as part of a “just and sustainable
international order.”

Contracts

France is pushing for the signature of a preliminary
contract as soon as Dec. 5 that may include two of six
Evolutionary Pressurized Reactor units and the supply of uranium
fuel. France and India may sign a preliminary contract that
would bring Areva closer to an agreement to build two 1,650
megawatt nuclear reactors at Jaitapur and supply them with
uranium, Press Trust of India agency reported on Nov. 24, citing
Nuclear Power Corp. of India Ltd. representatives.

The project passed a key hurdle on Nov. 28 when India’s
Environment Ministry gave its approval. India plans to add
60,000 megawatts of nuclear power capacity in the next 14 years,
a third of the current total output, to beat power shortages.

By participating in the work at the Jaitapur site, Paris-based Areva, the world’s biggest nuclear-power builder, “is
becoming a key partner in India’s nuclear energy sector,”
Sarkozy said in his speech. “When the cooperation phase is
completed, the six Franco-Indian EPRs will provide 10,000
megawatts of energy.”

Sarkozy and his wife Carla Bruni-Sarkozy, after a 4 1/2-hour stop in Bangalore, traveled to Agra for a visit to the Taj
Mahal.

France was India’s fifth-biggest trading partner in 2009,
according to India’s government spokesman, Vishnu Prakash.
French-Indian trade in the first nine months of this year was
worth 5.3 billion euros ($7 billion), down from 7.1 billion
euros in 2008, according to the French government.